Alan Moseley IT Consultancy

Blog Entry

4/8/2009 - How to take apart a Samsung R40 laptop

My task for today (or one of them anyway) was to stop a Samsung R40 laptop fan from making such a noise. Having never taken a Samsung apart, I looked for some resources, but found none. Usually most laptops take maybe twenty or thirty minutes to dismantle, but this one took me ages! Hoping that this saves someone a huge amount of time, here is how you do it:-

1. Put the laptop upside-down on an anti-static mat.2. Remove the battery.3. Undo the memory cover screws, and remove the memory modules.4. Undo the wireless cover and remove the wireless board. Pull the connector off the wireless board carefully.5. Undo the hard disk cover screws and remove the cover.6. Unscrew the hard disk fixings and remove the hard disk.7. Remove the two screws marked Kybrd.8. Turn the laptop back over, open the lid, and release the three latches at the bottom of the keyboard (they are quite small).9. Lift the keyboard out as far as you can, and release the wide ribbon cable which holding the keyboard in.10. Release the narrow ribbon cable.11. To the right of the keyboard area, there is a hole with a screw visible. Undo this using a magnetic screwdriver.12. You can now extract the CD/DVD drive.13. Turning the laptop back over, remove the small screw just inside the CD bay which is now empty.14. Remove all visible screws, and turn the laptop back over.15. Lever the right-hand end of the speaker grill from the casing, and carefully unclip all the way along the laptop.16. Remove the two hinge screws and remove the screen.17. Remove the tiny screw from next to the left hinge mounting area.18. You can now remove the top casing of the laptop.19. At this point I was able to see that a sticker had lodged in the fan area, and it was this that was causing the excessive noise (and smell). However, if you remove the screws from the main board, you should be able to remove the main board.